Remembering Pop: David Lynch and the Sound of the

Remembering Pop: David Lynch and the Sound of the '60s
Author(s): Mark Mazullo
Source: American Music, Vol. 23, No. 4 (Winter, 2005), pp. 493-513
Published by: University of Illinois Press
Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/4153071
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MARKMAZULLO
Remembering
Pop:
David
and
the
Lynch
Sound
of
the
'60s
For a neorealist. . . a glass is a glass and nothing more.. . . Contemplatedby dif-
ferentpeople,thesameglass canbea thousanddifferentthings,however,because
eachmanchargeswhathe is lookingat withemotion,and nobodysees it as it is
buthowhisdesiresandstateofmindwishtoseeit. I advocatea cinemathatmakes
me see thatkindof glass, becausesucha cinemawill give mean integralvision
of reality,augmentmy knowledge
of thingsandof people,andopenup to me the
marvelousworldof theunknown.
-Luis Bufiuel,"Thecinema,instrumentofpoetry"
Cop:Do you owna videocamera?
[Longpause]
Rend:No. Fredhatesthem.
[Longpause]
Fred:I liketo remember
thingsmyownway.
[Longpause]
meanby that?
Cop:Whaddaya
[Longpause]
Fred:HowI remembered
them.Not necessarilytheway theyhappened.
-David LynchandBarryGifford,Lost Highway
Substitute "pop song" for "glass" in the above quotation by Luis Bufiuel,
and you have a succinct description of one central element in the aesthetic
of American artist and filmmaker David Lynch. Since his first feature,
MarkMazullois assistantprofessorof musichistoryandpiano at MacalesterCollege in St. Paul,Minnesota.He holds a Ph.D.in musicology fromthe University
of Minnesotaand a master's degree in music from the Peabody Conservatory.
His articles and reviews on popular music subjectshave appeared in Popular
Music,MusicalQuarterly,
Journalof theAmericanMusicological
Society,Notes,and
the Ruminator
Review.He also performsfrequentlyas a pianist in chamber,solo,
and concertosettings.
AmericanMusic
Winter 2005
? 2005 by the Board of Trustees of the University of Illinois
494
Mazullo
the cult film Eraserhead
(madebetween 1972and 1977),Lynchhas found
creativeinspirationin various repertoriesof Americanpopularsong. In
the same way in which he establishesa culturaland moral topography
for his films by setting them in a variety of Americangeographicallocations-the relaxed,yet darkly mysterious PacificNorthwest in Twin
Peaks;the seethingly violent South in Wildat Heart;the superficialand
Drive-Lynch
corruptcity of LosAngeles in LostHighwayandMulholland
drawsupon the diversecatalogueof Americanpopularsong to lend each
of his films a uniqueexpressivesound signature.Thehard-edgedrockof
such recordingartistsas the SmashingPumpkinsand TrentReznor,for
instance,createsa distinctlycontemporarytone in LostHighway,matching the urban set design, even while the film borrows its title from another era's and region's icon, Hank Williams (and thereby situates its
themes, at least potentially,within the symbolicworld of popular-music
history). The scratchyorgan recordingsof Fats Wallercapturethe psyAnd in the
chologically distancingand melancholymood of Eraserhead.
brutal
murder
a
Twin
the
of
of
Peaks,
young woman is
early episodes
classic
1968recordingof
Louis
Armstrong's
sardonicallyanticipatedby
a
World."
"What
Wonderful
GeorgeWeiss and Bob Thiele'ssong
a
But if one musical repertorycan be said to occupy privileged position in Lynch'sfilms, it is the songs of his own formative years of the
mid-1950s to the mid-1960s. (He was born in Missoula, Montana in
1946.)Withinthis time period Lynchis especially drawn to songs from
the pop and rockabillytraditions that explicitly featurebanal, cliched
emotionaland musicalexpression.Lynch'sinterestin these songs seems
to arise at least in part from a certain uncanniness in their sound: a
distinctive voice, a provocativemix, a spotlighted arrangementor production. In such cases, a certain "abnormality"in the sound provides
a disconcerting foil to the song's almost unbearably naive sincerity,
the often-saccharine"normality"of its emotional message, harmonic
structure,rhythm,and musicalform.This allows Lynchto juxtaposethe
song's sincerity,expressed in its lyrics as well as in its musical details,
with elements of shocking violence or extremepsychological horror.A
popular song from this era functions in a Lynchfilm as a portal to the
uncanny,much in the way that an otherwise innocuous grove of sycamore trees functionsin TwinPeaksas the gateway to the "BlackLodge,"
a site of inexpressibleevil.'
Drawing upon Bufiuel(to be sure, one of Lynch'sstylisticforbearers),
one might say that Lynch'sinventive, expressive use of this repertory
of songs encourages a new mode of reception, a way of listening that
augments our understandingof the repertory,and indeed opens us up
to the "marvelous" qualities of recorded music-particularly popular
music from a time when developments in sound recording technology
highlighted these uncanny sounds, rendered even more distinctive in
DavidLynchand the Soundof the '60s
495
theirbeing put to service in an otherwise commonplacemusical setting,
the three-minutepop song. As PeterDoyle, Albin Zak, and others have
recently shown, this period saw the increaseduse, across various markets, of reverb,echo, and other sound-modifying techniques.2Doyle's
survey is of particularuse in understandingthe ways in which the new
vista of "auralspatiality"that entered sound recordingaestheticswith
developmentsin the 1920smoved fromfringemarketsand novelty contexts into the foregroundof the recordingindustry with the emergence
of such pioneering independent entrepreneursand producersas Leonard Chess and Sam Phillips. Moreover,Doyle makes an importantconnection between sound recordingsand the phenomenon of television:
discussing the success of VaughnMonroe's"Ridersin the Sky"(1949),a
recordingthatused heavy reverbto createa sense of sonic planes related
to the AmericanWest depicted in the lyric, he notes: "Itis perhaps also
significantthat so spatial and dramatica recordingshould be a standout commercialsuccess at preciselythe time Americanswere generally
buying few recordings,but were enthusiasticallyturning to the visual
spatial-dramaticpleasures offeredby television."3
In unpacking the relationshipsbetween these songs and their filmic
contexts we might begin to understand Lynch'sart as critical:placing
such songs within multidimensional,nonlinearnarratives,and structuring theirown mysterioussounds in accordancewith a carefullydesigned
soundscape in general, Lynchdisplaces them as unproblematicobjects
of nostalgic desire, in much the same way as he thematizes the act of
watching television by having his characterstune into soap operas and
detectivethrillers.In doing so, he createsthe opportunityfor a reimagining of theirhistory,or at least an interrogationof the "desiresand state[s]
of mind" (againto evoke Bufiuel)thatcause us to write--as individuals,
as a culturemorebroadlyconceived, even as subcultures--ourhistories
in the way that we do. In narrativesthat explore the perils of personal
authenticityunderthe conditionsof postmodernity-the split-consciousness on display in LostHighwayand MulhollandDrive,the nightmarethe neo-noir mystery of BlueVelvet-Lynch calls
fantasy of Eraserhead,
into question our culture's peculiar sublimation of the pop song, and
particularlyof the sincerity expressed in these often taken-for-granted
cultural texts. Instead, he seems to grasp instinctively the darkerpsychosocialfunctionsof mid-centuryAmericanpopularmusic culture,the
more threateningsubstratumof developments in sound reproduction.
As a result,Lynch'swork radicallytransformsone of popularmusic's
most historicallysignificantfunctionsin film.In a recentbook on the subject, Anahid Kassabian discusses the "affiliating identifications" that are
produced by the popular compilation score. As opposed to the composed
score of classical Hollywood film, which brings about "assimilating identifications" that "draw perceivers into socially and historically unfamiliar
496
Mazullo
positions"and thus obscureany relationshipbetween the viewers' own
historiesor identitiesand the positionsprofferedin the film, the effectof
a compilationscore depends on historicallyand culturallyspecific ties
between the film and its viewer. Here, "the perceivers bring external
associationswith the songs into their engagements with the film."4Of
course, viewers of a film by Lynchmay indeed have associationswith
the songs he uses; the relevant point, however, is that the context in
which they areused violently disruptsany such familiarity.Unlikefilms
in which popular music "groundsthe entirenarrativein the everyday"
and in which a viewer's affiliationis capitalizedupon (Kassabianuses
as one example Ridley Scott's ThelmaandLouise,and perhaps the most
obvious would be GeorgeLucas'sAmericanGraffiti),Lynch'swork uses
popular song as a means of alienatingthe everyday.
TheeffectthatmakesLynch'suse of such songs especiallynoteworthy
is thatof estrangement.
Severalcommentatorson his workhave discussed
this strategyin termsof visual, dramatic,and musicalelements.Writing
about Lynch'sDune (1984),film-sound theoristMichel Chion suggests
that the directorlearned something from his actorson this projectthat
would remainone of his stylistic trademarks:an interestin "non-naturalistic... forms of speech, a style of speaking mobilising a wide range
of types of articulation,idioms, and vocal textures."5In Dune,Lynch's
unconventionaluse of voiceover results, as Chion puts it,
in a continuumbetween the sentences spoken aloud and the inner
reflections,without any correspondingsound code to distinguish
them. The film's inner voices, often spoken softly, belong to the
same space as the externalized voices, thus blurring our relation
to reality.The reality on show rests on a discourse profferedas if
in a dream.6
This, coupled with a narrativestrategy that "assumes a very peculiar
logic requiring us to renounce all a prioriinterpretationsof behavior
and facts,"results in "a saturationof registersof discourse"in Lynch's
soundtracksin general.7It is worth adding thatthis style of speakingand
acting was well in place before it was highlighted in Dune throughthe
and one of Lynch'searliershort films,
use of voiceover:both Eraserhead
for
TheGrandmother
(1970), instance, are full of such stylized dramatic
inflections.Lynch,then,has fromthe beginningbeen interestedas much
in the estrangementof sound as he has been in the dissembling of narrative and the fracturingof human psychology.
SlavojZizekhas assertedthatthe estrangementof banalcontentis one
of the distinguishing characteristics of postmodern art.8In a more recent
book on Lynch's Lost Highway, Zizek expands on the idea, suggesting
that Lynch's trademark expressive move might be understood as "the
spiritual transubstantiation of common clich6s."9 In this book, Zizek
David Lynchand the Sound of the '60s
497
introduces the term ridiculous sublime to describe Lynch's intentional
use of clich6 and overstatement: scenes that otherwise might be taken
as parody-or, by Lynch's detractors, as directorial incompetence-are
meant to be taken in utter seriousness.
One of Zizek's prominent examples is the scene from Lost Highway
in which the character Mr. Eddy (Robert Loggia) has an incomprehensibly violent (or a ridiculously sublime) reaction to being tailgated on
a twisting mountain road. The scene elicits an uncomfortable laughter,
as the viewer is confronted with the juxtaposition of, on the one hand,
the character's ludicrously exaggerated reaction to the commonplace
situation and, on the other, a dreadful sense of lurking violence. Zizek
notes that one important result of the "uncannily ritualized behavior"
on display at such moments is that "the characters are strangely re-realized or, rather, de-psychologized." Arguing that those who find Lynch's
characters to be psychologically unconvincing suffer from an overreliance on "the limit of the 'psychological unity' of the human person,"
Zizek instead suggests that Lynch's entire output is in fact concerned
with "the growing disintegration of the proper 'psychological' dimension of authentic self-experience."10 In this scene from Lost Highway, for
instance, we are most easily able to grasp the representational quality of
Mr. Eddy's character:he is the authority figure, the super-ego element of
the fragmented consciousness that constitutes the film's main character
(known in the film as both Fred Madison and Pete Dayton). Notice, for
instance, how often Mr. Eddy and Pete (Balthazar Getty) hug and touch
each other, even while Pete seems repulsed by Mr. Eddy, especially after
his offer to lend Pete some porno videos.
While Zizek shies away from any discussion of music as such, and
while Chion's analysis of Lynch's sound and music ignores popular song
entirely, it can be argued that no element functions more effectively in his
work as the "ridiculous sublime" than mid-century American popular
song. No element, in other words, serves more forcefully as a depiction
and commentary on the "psychological dimension of authentic self-experience" to which Zizek refers. These songs, whose cultural function
is largely understood in terms of nostalgia and entertainment value,
are revealed, through a foregrounding of their uncanny sound, to be
implicated in this process of derealization. As Zizek puts it, but again
without reference to music: "In Lynch's universe, the psychological unity
of a person disintegrates into, on the one hand, a series of cliches, and,
on the other hand, outbursts of the 'raw,' brutal, desublimated real of an
unbearably intensive, (self)destructive, psychic energy."" Mid-century
pop songs, for Lynch, function both as theclich- and as the catalyst for
such brutal energy.
Lynch's 2001 film Mulholland Drive begins with a pop-song fantasy.
Against a dreamlike, purple traveling matte (known more commonly in
498
Mazullo
the film industry as a "blue screen"),four couples dance to an original
composition, entitled simply "Jitterbug,"by Lynch'slongtime musical
collaborator,Angelo Badalamenti.What we see, however, is far more
than eight people, for the screen explodes into a multitude of dimensions. Severaldifferenttakes of each couple are superimposed,some in
shadowy silhouette,some stepping acrossthe brightpurpleforeground,
some twisting and turningin the background,some even dancingwithin
the black silhouettes of themselves. As the illusion of the crowd begins
to reveal itself as a chimera through the use of a cross-fading editing
technique,the soundtrackis disruptedby a loud cracklingsound, and a
whitewashed image of a blonde woman is superimposedupon the front
of the screen.Graduallyher face becomes clearer,though still hazy and
somewhatunreal;she is smiling and steppingup to meet the wild cheers
of a crowd. An elderly couple, also filmed in white, flankher and smile.
The scene then dissolves, after about a minute, giving way to a shot of
a carpeted floor, filmed from above and accompanied by the sounds
of heavy breathing.The camerascans the floor and finds a bed, then a
pillow. And as the cameraslowly descends, we glimpse the shadow of
a head falling into the pillow. The scene then changes entirely,to a car
driving along a winding and hilly road at night, and the film's main title
sequence begins.
These firsttwo minutes of film areaccompaniedby the kind of imaginative sound design that admirershave come to expect from Lynch's
work.Beforeany image appears,we hearthe wind, then a gong or chime
pitched to middle C. A wobbly drone pitched to the low A below the
bass staffis sounded underneaththe wind and chime,and its pitchbends
upwardsto B flat,creatinga menacing(Jaws-like)risinghalf-stepmotive
thatwill reappearinverted(flat6-5 in D minor)as a saxophoneriffin the
jitterbug.A more purely pitched D above middle C then hints toward a
change, and when the D is doubled (like the images of the dancers)by
a low D beneath the bass staff, that pitch is revealed as the tonic of the
ensuing musical number,the jitterbug.As the rhythm section gets the
groove going, and as the purple screen and dancing silhouettes begin
to materializeon screen,the sound of a man's voice utteringsomething
unintelligiblein what appearsto be Japaneseis heard,along with several
other chatteringvoices. The jitterbug,as monotonous in its riffs as the
dance competitionthat it accompanies,is by now in full swing.
Severalelements of this sequence merit our attention.The first is the
fact that the artificialbackgroundis left exposed. The "bluescreen,"of
course, is commonly used as a backdrop for shots that would be impossible to film otherwise (perilous cliff-top action sequences and the
like); the "real" background is then filled in after the fact, creating the
illusion of reality. Here, the presence of the blank screen underscores
the contrived nature of the illusion: not only is Lynch emphasizing, as
DavidLynchandthe Soundof the '60s
499
he often does, the constructednatureof his art,but he is also telling us
somethingabouthis protagonist.Knownalternatelythroughoutthe film
as BettyElms and Diane Selwin, this split-identitycharacter(played by
Naomi Watts)is a failed actresswho had made her way to Hollywood
afterwinning a jitterbugcontest in her native Ontario.Thoughthe firsttime viewer cannotrealizeit at this earlypoint, the sequence represents
a daydream,one finalnightmarishrecollectionof her past triumphbefore
(as we learnat the film's wraparoundconclusion)she makes her way to
her bed, puts a gun in her mouth, and pulls the trigger.12Betty/Diane is
fantasizingin filmicterms:having sufferedthroughthe machinationsof
Hollywood, and having failed in her quest for stardom,it is only natural
that,in her finalmoments,she would put herselfon a movie set, merging
her own real past and her imagined future.
Moreover, Betty/Diane's split identity is vividly mirrored by the
multiple images of the dancing couples. The multidimensional screen
becomes a visual metaphorfor her own violently fragmentedself. Here,
the viewer may recognizeone of Lynch'smore overt referencesto one of
his most importantpredecessorsin this regard,Alfred Hitchcock-several of whose own films are,of course,peopled by split-consciousnesses
and whose main title sequences often provide visual representations
of such identity crises. Think, for instance, of the way the words are
formed in the main titles of Hitchcock's Psycho:split horizontal bars
emerge from both sides of the screen and meet in the middle, only to
be pulled apart again and retreatback to their respective halves of the
screen.When the word psychoappears,the lines matchup and then pull
themselves apart from one anotherand back again, playfully alluding
to the psychologicalproblemsof the main character-one might say the
title character-Norman Bates.
The opening of MulhollandDrivealso functionsintertextuallyon several levels within Lynch'sown oeuvre. His firstfeaturefilm, Eraserhead,
also begins with a fantasysequence,in which the main character,Henry
Spencer(JackNance),is consumedwith anxietyaboutbecominga father;
as in MulhollandDrive,we only recognize the meaning of the baffling
sequence later, once the (somewhat) more straightforwardnarrative
begins. Lynch's lesser-known video short TheCowboyand the Frenchman-made in 1988for a Frenchshort-filmseriesentitledLesFrangaisvus
par... ("TheFrench,as seen by .. .")'13-includes a climacticrockabilly
dance party featuringthe same cross-fadingediting techniqueused in
MulhollandDrive'sjitterbugsequence. The main titles of LostHighway
(1997)are accompaniedby an original song written and performedby
David Bowie, entitled "I'm Deranged." The titles are superimposed upon
the continuous image of the yellow median lines on a highway, another
representation of fragmented identity;14 as we learn when these main
titles dissolve into a shot of a man nervously puffing on a cigarette in the
500
Mazullo
dark, this film's own double protagonisthas been daydreamingabout
his own predicament,once again with popular song as the accompaniment. LikeMulhollandDrive,then, LostHighwayopens with a pop-song
fantasy-nightmare.Moreover,it also concludes by mirroringits beginning, with the same Bowie song underscoringa shot of the highway at
night and continuing on for the final credits.
Finally,and most important for our purposes here, the opening sequenceof MulhollandDriveactivelyengages not only with the film'sconclusion but with a crucialepisode at its center.The scene in questionis a
screen test, in which the would-be stars of a film are asked to lip-synch
to a recordingof a pop song while being watched by the film's director,Adam Kesher (JustinTheroux).The stage-an elaborateset within
a set-is made-up as an early 1960s-erarecordingstudio, completewith
period microphone,pastel-coloredshapes on the wall's acousticaltiles,
and actorsdressedin sequinedoutfitswith matchinglipstick.Aftera brief
clip of one auditionee'srenditionof "SixteenReasonsWhy I Love You"
(a song by Doree and Bill Post, performedhere by Connie Stevens),the
mysteriousCamillaRhodes (MelissaGeorge)entersthe set, looking furtive and glazed,perhapseven drugged.Whilethe previousactorhad been
supportedby four backupsingers,Camillaappearsalone on stage.
As Keshercalls out "action,"the tape rolls with a 1961recordingby
Linda Scott of the Oscar HammersteinII and JeromeKern song "I've
ToldEveryLittleStar"(which,speakingof intertextuality,was originally
writtenfor the 1932stage musicalMusicin theAir,a title thatfans of Twin
Peakswill recognizefromthe dwarf'sdescriptionof the BlackLodge).The
recordinghas two distinguishing characteristicsthat invite interpretation. First,in the introduction-which in this repertoryis often reserved
for instrumentals,such as the soaring strings in the previous number,
"SixteenReasons.. ."-we have a fade-in,with Scottvocalizingon childish nonsense syllables, an expressive feature,typical of this era, carried
throughthe song and complementedby its firstline, "Ohbaby,I've told
every little star."Second, throughout the two-minute song, the vocals
are overdubbed,with one trackthe prominentelement in the left stereo
channel and the other,heavily echoed, placed squarely in the middle,
while the right channel emphasizes the instrumentalaccompaniment.
In MulhollandDrivein general, and in this scene in particular,Lynch
is raising a concern that has been central to his work as a whole: the
issue of communication.His films are filled not only with doubles and
psychopaths, but also individuals with hearing loss (the charactersof
and Gordon Cole in TwinPeaks),
Slim in TheCowboyand theFrenchman
distorted voices, or an inability (genetic or otherwise) to speak. In Mulholland Drive, the theme of muteness is coupled with that of gender in a
way that recalls his past work. In his discussion of Lynch's early films,
particularly his first live-action short, TheAlphabet(1968), Michel Chion
DavidLynchandthe Soundof the '60s
501
explains that "fromthe beginning, there is a privileged relationshipin
his films between women, writing, and the alphabet."'5For instance,
in TwinPeaks,the murderer of several women places individual letters, printed on tiny pieces of paper,underneath the fingernailsof his
victims. To Chion's suggestion, one might add that speech is equally as
significantas writing in such an equation.Severalscenes in Mulholland
Drivedemonstratethe female protagonistsreduced to nonverbalforms
of communication;cut off from words and the ability to make sound,
they instead lip-synch songs or stifle themselves when screaming or
crying.16
Thus, two structural elements of the song "I've Told Every Little
Star"-its multidimensionalvocal trackplaced in two distinct areas of
the mix (a sonic split-identity,so to speak)and the "wordless"nonsensesyllable introduction-are intrinsically tied to the film's overarching
themes. And as the screen test gives way to the next scene, we find the
benignpop song followed up by perhapsthe most horrifyingof the film's
many frighteningmoments:the discoveryof a rottingcorpseon a bed in
an abandonedapartment(theremainsof Betty/Diane'ssuicide).As Betty
and Rita (LauraHarring)run out of the apartmentin which they have
discovered this gruesome spectacle,the soundtrack,instead of audibly
representingtheirterror,instead cancelsit out. Hands over theirmouths
and eyes bulging, the screamingwomen are accompaniednot by their
own sounds but by otherworldlydroning.Lynchthus maintainscontinuity in this progressionfrom a hackneyedpop song, featuringlip-synch,
to a moment of unspeakablehorror,featuringmuted cries. As we look
moreclosely at the characteristicsof the song itself,we begin to see how it
may have inspiredthe filmmakeralong theselines:the overdubbedvocal
trackon the recordingitself is "impossible,"an auditory fantasy from
the 1960sused to underscorea twenty-first-centuryidentity crisis.
The Drifters'1959recordingof Doc Pomus and MortShuman's"This
Magic Moment" is typical of the kind of mid-century pop song that
Lynch might find appealing. On the one hand, there is the immediacy
of the vocals, performedby Bennie Nelson, who was soon to leave the
group and enjoy a successful solo careeras Ben E. King. The chorus, in
standard thirty-two-barAABA form over a I-VI-IV-V-I progression,
features a string-dominated arrangementby Stan Applebaum. Especially noteworthy is the expressive shift in the accompanimentfor the
bridge: the strings are replaced by a seductive acoustic guitar for the
lines "sweeterthan wine; softer than the summernight."But the song's
instrumentalintroduction-featuring an over-the-topchromaticstring
figure,played out of synch with the rhythmsection,evidently meantby
Applebaum to convey the "magic" of the song's title-is most relevant
to our discussion. From the beginning, the arrangement creates a tension
between the reassuring vocal and the disconcerting chromatic strings.
502
Mazullo
While our culturalmemory of the Drifterssurely centers around the
group's stirring vocals, it is worth rememberingthat their work was
positioned during a period of great advances in studio productionand
arranging,when the intimateact of singing into a microphonewas being
transformed,slowly but surelyin the pop realm,into an artificialprocess
of multitrackoverdubbing,mixing,and editing.AlbinZakexplainshow
the process of recordingsongs was foreverchanged during this period.
Any distortionof realitybecamepossible, any breachof the authenticity
contractforgivable.Forthose with progressiveattitudestoward the use
of technology,the transformationwas freeing:Zak quotes one engineer
as saying that this record"changedpop music forever.... Therewasn't
a shred of reality in it-and it was wonderful."17The sincere and yet
somewhat bizarre recording of "ThisMagic Moment"by the Drifters
is an example of this unreal quality of the era's studio pop recordings:
Applebaum's arrangementtakes the group's vocal delivery to a new
dimension.
The questions of authenticityand new dimensions of reality brings
us back to David Lynchand his use of the song "ThisMagic Moment"
in LostHighway.Though surely familiarwith both the Drifters'version
(which hit number4 on the r&bchartsand number16 on the pop charts
in 1960)and an even more successful 1969recordingof the song by Jay
and the Americans,Lynchopted for a version of the song performedby
Lou Reed in the mid-1990son a tribute album to Doc Pomus released
by Rhino Records.The change in style from sincere 1960s-stylepop to
a rock-inspiredstyle with droning guitars and Reed's quirky,intoned
vocals perfectly captures the existential twist that lies at the center of
Lynch'sfilm.
As is the case with most of Lynch'sfilms, LostHighwayis concerned
with alternaterealities,in which a characteris given the opportunityto
"manage"or deal psychologically with a particulartraumaby experiencing it from anotherperspective.In LostHighway,the man is a musician,the saxophoneplayerFredMadison(playedby BillPullman),who
murdershis wife, Renee (played by PatriciaArquette)and, afterbeing
sent to death row,is able to inhabitthe body of anotherman, the young
mechanic Pete Dayton (BalthazarGetty), and witness the conditions
of his own life through the eyes of another in a parallel universe. The
scene in which Pete sees for the firsttime the alternate-realityversion of
his dead wife (now a platinumblonde named Alice Wakefield,but still
played by Arquette),is filmed in seductive slow motion, with Reed's
version of "ThisMagic Moment"as the only sound element.
Placed within this particularnarrativestructure,the song works on
a number of levels. For one, there is the obvious, and perhaps tonguein-cheek, point that this is indeed a "magic moment": in this scene, the
viewer realizes for the first time that both characters from the first half of
David Lynchand the Sound of the '60s
503
the film, Fred and Renee, are present, in different bodies, in the second
half's alternate reality, as Pete and Alice. The connection is made more
palpable by the scene's set-up, in which Pete is working under a car
with the radio on, tuned to a station playing none other than the manic
jazz that Fred Madison had played live on stage in the film's first half;
Pete cannot stand hearing the music, a painful reminder of his "former"
existence, and abruptly changes the station, as his odd coworker (a bit
part played by Lynch veteran Jack Nance, of Eraserheadfame) mutters,
"I liked that."
But the particular use of Lou Reed's recording of the song, rather than
one of the better-known pop versions, is also worth noting. Of course, the
classic '60s pop sound of the Drifters and Jay and the Americans would
not have worked within the sound and music scheme of Lost Highway
in general, which is characterized by an alternative rock sound and such
recording artists as Marilyn Manson, Rammstein, and Trent Reznor. But
there is more to the switch. In an insightful historical survey of pop music that celebrates its commonplace and cliched qualities, Simon Frith
comments on "the underlying nostalgia of pop music culture: pop songs
are designed both to sound familiar and to make one regret that times
and people change."'" Substituting the well-known pop recordings of
"This Magic Moment" with this quasi-minimalist performance by Lou
Reed, then, Lynch is providing a musical symbol for the drastic changes
in time and space that the characters undergo. On a deeper level, Lynch
is providing a metacommentary on our culture's reception of popular
song in general: just as Fred's predicament leads him, via his transformation into Pete, to a radical reappraisal of his own troubled past, so
too does the performance by Lou Reed invite the viewer to consider
the history of this particular song, whose more familiar version spoke
of a popular-music culture on the verge of transformation, of a time in
which the simple sincerity of pop singing was being challenged by the
new imperatives of authenticity imposed by the burgeoning style of rock
'n' roll, and in which the practice of equating recording with performing was threatened by new and, for some, disruptive technologies that
radically transformed pop music's emotional terrain.
Perhaps the most palpable example of a popular song functioning
as the "ridiculous sublime" in Lynch's work appears in a gripping episode from the first season of his television series Twin Peaks, an episode directed by Lynch himself. Three teenagers-James Hurley (James
Marshall), Donna Hayward (Lara Flynn Boyle), and Maddie Ferguson
(Sheryl Lee)-struggling to cope with the murder of Laura Palmer, are
performing a song in Donna's living room. The song, "Just You and I,"
is an original, with lyrics by Lynch and music by Badalamenti. Beyond
the stereotypical lyrics, form, and harmony of a mid-century popular
love ballad, the song's most notable feature is the Roy Orbison-like vocal
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timbrethatwe hearcomingfromJames,the motorcycle-driving
boy-nextdoor with whom LauraPalmerhad been having an affairbeforeshe was
killed, and to whom Donna is now attracted.Just as the singing voice
doesn't quite match up with James'snormal speaking voice, the scene
itselfhas the feelingof a completenon sequitur-we have not to thispoint
encounteredthese charactersas musicians,and we never againsee them
performingon instrumentsor singing.19Moreover,the technologicalmanipulationof James'svoice also functionsto displace the scene, creating
a dissonancebetween the viewed environment(theliving room)and the
auralenvironment.In otherwords,we areled at least to considerthatthe
safety and stabilityaffordedby the comfortablyfurnishedand carpeted
domestic space is at risk, that an alternativerealityis equally plausible,
one in which Jameshas the voice of a rock star,in which unplayed and
unseen instrumentsareheard,and in which otherwiseforbiddensexual
desire is tantalizinglyclose to being fulfilled.
Of course, this is exactly what transpires:"reality"is turned on its
head. At the tail end of this rather uncomfortablylong performance,
Donna glimpses over and sees Maddie seductively locking eyes with
James.Donna runs out of the room,with Jamesfollowing, and she then
receives a telephone call. While the two are out of the room, Maddie,
Laura'scousin who is in Twin Peaks for an extended visit after the funeral,is left alonein the living room.As she sits on the floorwaitingto see
what comes of her advance toward James,and her betrayalof Donna's
friendship,she has a vision of "Bob"(FrankSilva),the malevolentspirit
who embodies Laura'sfather,LelandPalmer(RayWise),and who had
driven him to kill his daughter.The vision is horrific,with Bob slowly
entering the unusually deep living room, moving slowly toward Maddie, and completely overtakingthe camera'sframe.And, as expected,
the pop-song soundtrackgives way to yet anotherof Lynch'strademark
drones.
Clearly,the bland pop song here is far from a non sequitur.Rather,
it is the vehicle that allows Lynch to represent Maddie's turn to the
"bad side"-that is, the awakening of her sexuality.And as all Lynch
fans know-as well as anyone who has read KateChopin'snovella The
Awakeningor any othertext that can be categorizedunder this symbolic
lineage (such as Hitchcock'sPsycho)-women who step outside their
social-sexual boundaries and experience desire are bound to be punished somehow for their "whorish"ways.20 Both Maddie and Laura
(bothplayed by SherylLee)were such women: Laura,for her own part,
was a cheerleaderby day and a cocaine-addictedprostitute by night.
The pop song in this scene of TwinPeaks,then, is an agent of provocation, a portal through which Bob is allowed to enter Maddie's life and
ultimately (in the next episode) destroy her. It is, finally, a new song that
tells us something about old songs-their clashes between innocence and
DavidLynchandthe Soundof the '60s
505
desire,between the comfortsof sincerityand the unfathomabledangers
of authenticity.And once againwe find Lynchdrawingon his trademark
strategyof varyingvocal styles and timbresto signify somethingbeyond
the realm of normal experience.
In an essay on music in TwinPeaks,KathrynKalinakwrites that "even
music defined as clearly diegetic on TwinPeakscan be 'deceptive."'21
In
the case of this scene, as we have seen elsewhere, the sounds emerging
from the diegetic performance are best described as impossible. The
only instrumentwe see is a guitar (with amplifier),yet we hear a bass;
the whole performanceis heavily echoed, without an accompanying
apparatusto produce the effect;and most importantly,James'svoice is
altered as if by studio engineering, though he is merely singing into a
microphone. Indeed, we seem to have here an example of the kind of
"vocal close-up" that Michel Chion discusses in his book TheVoicein
Cinema.As Chion explains, we tend to "forget"the voice "becausewe
confuse it with speech. Fromthe speech act we usually retain only the
significationsit bears, forgettingthe medium of the voice itself."22And
yet here Lynch,in defamiliarizingJames'svoice, is forcingus to pay attention not to the song's lyrics (saturatedwith such sentimentsas "just
you, and I, together,forever,in love")but to the sound of this voice itself.
In retrospect,afterwitnessing the appearanceof Bob,perhapswe areled
to interpretthe strangenessof James'svoice as some sort of warning to
Maddie:alreadyin the hackneyedpop song, she is being led down the
path toward her own destruction.
As Kalinakexplains, "[T]hesemanipulationsfunction to undermine
sound as transcendent and authentic."Such a strategy extends to all
levels of Lynch'sfilmic text:
In deliberately undercutting the dominant reading of the image
track,music draws attentionto the artificeof the text, its inability
to capture the depth and complexity of human emotion, even to
simulate reality.... Our attentionis drawn out of the diegesis and
towards the apparatusthat produced it.23
Driveby retaining
Again,as he did in the openingsequenceof Mulholland
the travelingmatte,Lynchhereis remindingus of the constructednature
of his work, of the many acts of mediation that go into the creationof
art. Indeed, the examples discussed in this articleshare one important
feature:they emphasize the act of puttingsomethingon display;they all,
in other words, are conspicuously staged.And in this observation lies
perhaps the essence of the connection between Lynch'swork and the
popular songs with which he is so fascinated. While pop songs of this era
are perhaps most notably characterized by their manipulation of sound
via the studio, so, too, do Lynch's films draw attention to the conditions
of their own production.
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One noteworthydevelopmentin recentfilm scholarshiphas been Tom
Gunning'sresearchon the "cinemaof attractions."In a series of articles,
Gunninghas examinedthe historyof early film in termsof the spectacle
that such films produced.In particular,Gunninghas been interestedin
drawing a distinctionbetween the "diegeticabsorption"elicited by the
dominanttraditionof narrativefilm and the "exhibitionistconfrontation"
of early cinema of attractions,representedby the work of such early
masters as Lumiere and Mlies.24 Such early films, accordingto Gunning, can be characterizedchiefly by their differencefrom a "cinemaof
narrativeintegration":early filmmakersexploited not plot or character
developmentbut rather"visualpyrotechnics,""momentsof spectacle,"
and the act of putting a performanceon display.25Asa result,the "exhibitionist scenography"of the cinema of attractionsis best understood
as an alternativeaestheticparadigmto the laternarrativecinema,which
caters unfailingly to an "unacknowledgedvoyeur."Perhapsmost relevant to a discussion of Lynchis the fact that as the dominantnarrative
cinematictraditiondeveloped, it retainedsome connectionto the early
cinema of attractions;used in the contextof an otherwisenarrativefilm,
an aestheticof the attraction"providesan undergroundcurrentflowing
beneathnarrativelogic and diegetic realism,producingthose moments
beloved by the surrealists."26
of cinematicdepaysement
The scenes describedin this articlemight be understood as examples
of attractions,as Surrealistsound objectsthatpunctuatethe (quasi-)narrative films in which they are found. Lynch draws upon a variety of
cinematic devices-slow-motion photographyin the "ThisMagic Moment"scene in LostHighway,the framingof a set-within-a-setin the "I've
ToldEveryLittleStar"scene in Mulholland
Drive,depth-perceptiontricks
extending the Haywards' living room to abnormalproportionsin the
"JustYou and I" scene in TwinPeaks-that serve to highlight the act of
putting somethingon display.But,of course,in each of these sequences,
is a popularsong. Inputtingmid-centurypopular
thatwhich is performed
a
certain
of
production-heavyilk in such contexts, Lynchdraws
songs
attentionto the acts of display that are contained within this repertory
itself, outside of their present filmic contexts. In other words, once we
begin to hone in on the artificialityof the contextsin which we arehearing these songs and seeing them performed,we are in a betterposition
to recognize their own inherent strangeness, the artificeof their own
construction,which was so closely tied to the technological developments of the mid-twentiethcentury.
As suggested above, such techniques on Lynch'spart may lead to a
sense of alienation,ratherthan recognition,on the part of the viewer.
And this term will, of course, bring to mind Brecht's Verfremdungseffekt:
it constitutes a reminder to the audience that what they are witnessing
is not real, but rather an artificial construction made to appear real-that
David Lynchand the Sound of the '60s
507
the camera's frame is a stage, and that what goes on within that frame is
a sign, a symbolic representation that allegorizes the conditions of their
own existence. Gunning stresses the connection between the effect of the
early cinema of attractions and the theoretical formulations of the avant
garde:
Attractions are a response to an experience of alienation, and for
Kracauer (as for Benjamin) cinema's value lay in exposing a fundamental loss of coherence and authenticity. Cinema's deadly temptation lay in trying to attain the aesthetic coherence of traditional art
and culture. The radical aspiration of film must lie along the path
of consciously heightening its use of discontinuous shocks, or as
Kracauer puts it, "must aim radically towards a kind of distraction
which exposes disintegration rather than masking it." As [Miriam]
Hansen has indicated, Benjamin's analysis of shock has a fundamental ambivalence, moulded certainly by the impoverishment of
experience in modern life, but also capable of assuming "a strategic
significance-as an artificial means of propelling the human body
into moments of recognition.'"27
Such a perspective can shed much light on the general reception of
Lynch's work. Take, for instance, Terrence Rafferty's review in The Nation of Lynch's Blue Velvet:"it's a real movie, the first one in a long time
that turns the viewer's passivity into furious cognitive activity."28Here
the critic is describing the same sense of alienation, the same idea of
propelling spectators into the "new modes of recognition" that Gunning
and Hansen describe.
Lynch's films elicit just the kind of reception aesthetic that the Surrealists stressed. On the topic of these "discontinuous shocks," for instance,
consider Andre Breton's account of his early encounters with film. Breton
writes of the "magnetizing effects" of cinema, the experience of coming
out of a film "charged." Instead of looking in the newspaper and finding
a film to view in its entirety at a specific time, Breton preferred just dropping in on films, experiencing them piecemeal, as sporadic attractions
rather than as continuous depictions of "real life." Thus, Breton found
his greatest joy in cinema's "power to disorient."29Lynch, like the Surrealists, believes in the overwhelming power of these moments. And his
viewers, rather than being lulled into a kind of absorption-a mode of
reception that remains the central feature of the reception of narrative
cinema-are instead thrown off track at every turn.
For many, the quintessential examples of Lynch's obsession with midcentury American song may be found in his breakthrough 1985 film,
Blue Velvet.Lynch himself has described the film's genesis in terms of his
encounter with Bobby Vinton's classic 1963 recording of the title song:
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It was the song that sparked the movie! ... I don't know what it
was about that song, because it wasn't the kind of music that I really liked. Buttherewas somethingmysteriousaboutit. It made me
think about things.And the firstthings I thought aboutwere lawns
[laughs]-lawns and the neighborhood.It's twilight-with maybe
a streetlighton, let's say, so a lot of it is in shadow.And in the foreground is part of a car door, or just a suggestion of a car,because
it's too dark to see clearly.But in the car is a girl with red lips. And
it was these red lips, blue velvet and these black-greenlawns of a
neighborhoodthat startedit.30
The film's outstanding title sequence has been much discussed in the
literatureon Lynch as a classic example of the director'sjuxtaposition
of the banal and the horrifying:a neo-noir opening numberby Angelo
Badalamenti(accompanyinga still shot of waving blue velvet curtains)
gives way to Vinton's recording of the title song (set to hyper-glossy
clich6sof small-townAmericanlife: white picket fences, red roses,blue
skies, waving firemen),and then gradually,after a man has a heart attackwhile wateringhis lawn, to the sounds of cracklingand droning,as
the cameradescends into the grass and comes upon a disturbingscene
of warringinsect life.
But a latersequenceusing Roy Orbison'ssong "InDreams"is more to
this article'spoint.The scene,set in the apartmentof a mysteriousundergroundfigurenamedBen(DeanStockwell),begins with what we assume
is diegetic radio music in a rhythm-and-bluesstyle-a heavy backbeat,
crashingcymbals, saxophone, and rhythmsection in moderatetempo.
Functioningas backgroundmusic, the music lends a note of mockeryto
the scene, its alternatinghead and solos on sax and guitarmonotonously
representingthe depravedlives of Ben and his crew of misfits and obese
women.31Therhythm-and-bluescue is faded out abruptlyafterthe film's
chief villain, FrankBooth (Dennis Hopper), and his own crew show up
(with the boyish protagonist,Jeffrey[KyleMacLachlan],and the lounge
singerDorothy[IsabellaRossellini]in tow as the gang'svictims),and Ben
and Frankmove to a side room to discuss a drug deal. When the scene
switches back into the main room, the anonymous rhythm-and-blues
music is gone, and soon Ben puts a cassette in the player,turns on the
spotlight, and begins his performanceof the Orbisonsong.
Decked out in whiteface (another trademarkLynch visual, used as
and perhapsmost famously for RobertBlake's
early as TheGrandmother
of
the
character
"MysteryMan" in LostHighway),Ben sings the introductoryverse. But as he reachesthe vocal climaxat the beginning of the
chorus, the performance is interrupted by a clearly distraught Frank,
who can no longer tolerate its intensity.32Quickly Frank and his crew
leave Ben's apartment and the scene shifts to the aforementioned shot of
DavidLynchandthe Soundof the '60s
509
the highway median strip at night, accompaniedby a heavy guitarriff.
When Frankpulls the car over,Orbison'ssong returns,this time played
on the car's cassette player, while Franktortures Jeffreyand, repeating after Orbison,speaks each line in turn. We hear much more of the
song here, including the vocally heightened chorus, and perhaps most
significantly,one of the women who has accompaniedFrank'sgang on
this joy ride climbs onto the roof of the car and dances sensually in the
moonlight. Indeed, it is this dancing as much as the scene of torturegoing on next to the car that allows us to interpretthis scene in terms of a
staged attraction.Ben'slip-synchingperformance,Frank'sspoken-word
follow-up, and the anonymous woman's dancing all serve as elements
of on-display performance,drawing the viewer even more deeply into
the haunting quality of the recording'ssound, and its connectionto the
mysterious events on screen.
Discussing Dean Stockwell's lip-synching to "In Dreams" in Blue
Velvet,Timothy Corriganpoints out "the song's double removal from
naturalexpression(as a performanceof a recordingof a performance)."33
Corriganwants to link this idea of a "doubleremoval"to his overallreading of the film, which, drawing on an earlieressay by FredericJameson,
emphasizes its complex relationshipto nostalgia:
What disturbs about [Lynch's films] is a shared preoccupation
with a historical evaporation of social or psychological meaning
beneaththe surfaceof seemingly normalplaces,things, and people,
an evacuationthat leaves only grotesqueshells.... In each case the
past and the future contend for the same place, a historicalreality
that, missing any kind of depth of historical spirit, becomes only
a violent collection of images and cliches in searchof stability and
meaning.34
But taking the realities of mid-century recording technology into account, Stockwell'screepyperformanceis more accuratelydescribedas a
performanceof a recordingof severalperformancesamalgamated,in the studio,
into a seemingly unifiedperformance.Therefore, this scene from Blue Velvet
(as well as the scene from TwinPeaksdiscussed above) representsmore
a triple, or perhaps even quadruple removal from reality, and one of
its true horrorsis the absence of the technology requiredto make such
connections possible. Orbison'sheavily echoed voice, for example-a
trademarkof the era in productionterms-lends an auralcomplement
to the distance that separatesBen, Frank,and their crews fromJeffrey's
everyday reality.
Recalling Gunning's statement that "cinema's value lay in exposing
a fundamental loss of coherence and authenticity," we can easily extend such a proposition to the realm of mid-century American popular
music culture. As Zak has shown, reactions toward changing recording
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technologyduringthis period were mixed on the partof those involved.
Many artistsfelt thatoverdubbingrepresentedthe same kind of loss: the
traditionalconnectionbetween recordingand live music-makingwas
stripped of its authenticity,and what took its place was an artificiality
that, for them, had no place in true art.For others,of course, it was liberating and exciting. It is for this reason that music from this period so
suits Lynch:it is the time in which recordingsthemselves change from
documentary artifacts of sound into poetic amalgamations of sound
objects--oftendisparate,unrelatedsound objects,often accidental,often
multipletakesof the samevoice singingthe samewords,but combinedin
such a way as to createan entirelynew, impossible sound that takes the
delivery of the message to a new dimension. Lynch'sfilms, in drawing
so heavily fromthis repertory,underscorethe strangenessof these radical new technologies,thus inviting scholarsof the music of this period
to reevaluatethe kinds of expressive,psychosocialmeanings contained
therein.Lynch'streatmentof theserecordingsremindsus thatthe earliest
exploiters of technology in the realm of youth-orientedpopular music
also problematizedthe relationshipbetween listenerand recording,and
of course between performanceand recording. Sam Philips, Leonard
Chess, Phil Spector,and many others put their productionson display,
created sometimes bizarre aural attractions,and forced the alienation
of the listener fromthe recording,all within the context of an otherwise
commonplace"narrative"form, the everyday pop song.
Lynch'sfilms, then, suggest that we might begin to explore our own
culture's "ridiculoussublimation"of the popular music of this era:no
longerunproblematicallyacceptedas merenostalgicentertainment,these
songs instead are held up as potential markersof a changing cultural
psyche. Think,for instance,of CaroleKing and GerryGoffin's "He Hit
Me (It Felt Like a Kiss),"recordedby the Crystalswith the help of Phil
Spectorin 1962,or the song "ButteredPopcorn,"writtenby BerryGordy
and BarneyAles and recordedat Motownby the Supremesin 1961("My
baby likes, ButteredPopcorn;he likes it greasy,and sticky,and gooey,
and salty").The inherentviolence and sexuality of these songs, and so
many others like them, is erased in our culture's tendency to reduce
this era's repertoryto mere nostalgia value; and, of course, elements
of the sonic surface function to lull the listener into a mode of passive
reception.But the sinceritythat our cultureassumes to be the overarching psychological tendency of this era only superficiallymasks a more
potent form of self-expressionand self-exploration,that of authenticity.
Putting a perhaps appropriatereverse spin on the snippet of dialogue
from Lost Highway quoted at the beginning of this essay, we might say
that Lynch asks us to consider pop not "as we remember it" but "as it
really happened"-shunning the comforts of our own nostalgia in favor
DavidLynchand the Soundof the '60s
511
of a more expansive and ultimately discomfortingview of these texts
and the culturethat produced them.
NOTES
An earlier version of this essay was presented at the national meeting of the International
Association for the Study of Popular Music-U.S. in Cleveland, Ohio, October 2002. Research for this project was generously supported by a grant from the William and Flora
Hewlett Foundation to Macalester College. The author would like to thank Barry Salmon,
Phil Ford, Annette Davison, and this journal's two anonymous readers for their helpful
feedback on earlier drafts.
1. The choice of sycamore trees seems not to be accidental. In Egyptian mythology, two
sycamores (whose wood was used to make mummy cases) were said to stand at the site
from which the sun rose each morning; a battle over night and day would take place at
the foot of the trees every dawn.
2. See Peter Doyle, "From 'My Blue Heaven' to 'Race with the Devil': echo, reverb and
(dis)ordered space in early popular music recording," PopularMusic 32, no. 1 (2004): 31-49,
and Albin J. Zak III, ThePoetics of Rock:Cutting Tracks,Making Records(Berkeley: University
of California Press, 2001). One significant strand of this story that must be left out here for
reasons of space is the parallel development of technologies of cinematic representation in
the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. Of course, such technologies will have
had a significant, perhaps more direct, influence on Lynch as a filmmaker and visual artist. Clearly, there is much to be said about the ways in which film and recorded music
followed similar paths in their techniques of representing their respective source material.
Analogies, too, may be made between "impossible" sounds of the type discussed here and
such filmic tricks as double exposure, rear projection, filters, and the like.
3. Doyle, "From 'My Blue Heaven' to 'Race with the Devil,"' 37.
4. Anahid Kassabian, Hearing Film: TrackingIdentifications in ContemporaryHollywood
Film Music (New York:Routledge, 2001), 2-3.
5. Michel Chion, David Lynch,trans. Robert Julian (London: British Film Institute, 1995),
60-61.
6. Ibid., 70.
7. Ibid., 21, 70.
8. Slavoj Zizek, ed., Everything YouAlways Wantedto KnowAbout Lacan(But WereAfraid
to Ask Hitchcock)(New York:Verso, 1992).
9. Slavoj Zizek, TheArt of the RidiculousSublime:On David Lynch'sLost Highway (Seattle:
University of Washington Walter Chapin Simpson Center for the Humanities, 2000), 35.
10. Ibid., 35, 32.
11. Ibid., 35.
12. The film's final apotheosis owes something to the redemptive conclusion to Lynch's
1993 film TwinPeaks:Fire Walkwith Me. Moreover, the whitewashed image of Betty/Diane
from the beginning of MulhollandDrive reappears at its conclusion, this time accompanied
not by the elderly couple but by her lover in the film, another double named Rita/Camilla.
13. Four other directors took part in the project: Werner Herzog (Germany), Andrzej
Wajda (Poland), Luigi Comencini (Italy), and Jean-Luc Godard (France). The idea for the
series came from a 1964 collaborative film entitled Paris vus par made by members of the
French avant-garde film movement, including Godard.
14. Lynch had used the same image in his 1985 film Blue Velvet.
512
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15. Chion, David Lynch,4.
16. One of the film's more famous examples comes later, in the scene set in the aptly
named nightclub "Silencio." Here, the real-life singer Rebekah del Rio lip-synchs to her
own recording, in a Spanish translation entitled "Llorando," of Roy Orbison's 1961 hit
"Crying." The scene also puts a performance on display in the way that will be discussed
later in this article.
17. Zak, Poetics of Rock, 11. On this topic, see also Theodore Gracyk, Rhythm and Noise:
An Aesthetics of Rock (Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 1996), especially chapter 1,
"That Wild, Thin Mercury Sound: Ontology" (pp. 1-36), and Simon Frith, "Popular Music
andRecording,
ed. George
1950-1980,"in MakingMusic:TheGuideto Writing,Performing
Martin (New York:Morrow, 1983), 18-48.
18. Simon Frith, "Pop Music," in The CambridgeCompanionto Pop and Rock, ed. Simon
Frith, Will Straw and John Street (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 97.
19. We do, in the next episode, see Donna "singing" at the roadhouse; while the
soundtrack is completely dominated by the onstage performance of Julee Cruise, Donna
is silently singing along while crying. This is all happening at the same time as Maddie,
alone with Leland at the Palmer house, is being killed by her uncle; thus, Donna's silent
singing might be taken as a reference back to the night before, when she, Maddie, and
James had performed the song in the Haywards' living room.
20. For a discussion of the ways in which such cases of "drowned virgin-whores" relate
to the work of British recording artist P. J. Harvey, see my "Revisiting the Wreck: P. J.
Harvey's Dry and the Drowned Virgin-Whore," PopularMusic 20, no. 3 (2001): 431-47.
21. Kathryn Kalinak, "'Disturbing the Guests with This Racket': Music and TwinPeaks,"
in Full of Secrets:CriticalApproachesto Twin Peaks, ed. David Lavery (Detroit: Wayne State
University Press, 1995), 86.
22. Michel Chion, The Voice in Cinema, ed. and trans. Claudia Gorbman (New York:
Columbia University Press, 1999), 1, 165.
23. Kalinak, "Disturbing the Guests," 87, 89.
24. Tom Gunning, "The Cinema of Attractions: Early Film, Its Spectator and the AvantGarde," in Early Cinema:Space, Frame, Narrative, ed. Thomas Elsaesser (London: British
Film Institute, 1990), 59.
25. Tom Gunning, "'Now You See It, Now You Don't': The Temporality of the Cinema
of Attractions," in Silent Film, ed. Richard Abel (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University
Press, 1996), 74.
26. Tom Gunning, "An Aesthetic of Astonishment: Early Film and the (In)Credulous
Spectator," in Film Theoryand Criticism:IntroductoryReadings,ed. Leo Braudy and Marshall
Cohen, 5th ed. (New York:Oxford University Press, 1999), 826-27.
27. Ibid., 831-32.
28. Terrence Rafferty, "Blue Velvet" (movie reviews), TheNation, Oct. 18, 1986, 243.
29. Andr6 Breton, "As in a Wood," in The Shadowand Its Shadow:Surrealist Writings on
the Cinema,ed. Paul Hammond, 3d ed. (San Francisco: City Lights Books, 2000), 73.
30. Chris Rodley, ed., Lynchon Lynch (London: Faber and Faber, 1997), 134.
31. Putting obese women on display as representations of the grotesque is another of
Lynch's controversial trademarks. In Mulholland Drive, one particularly disturbing (or,
perhaps better, "ridiculous sublime") scene features a large woman who, having been
shot in the buttocks through a wall, complains, "Something bit me bad." In Blue Velvet,
the element of display is heightened by the fact that the women appear nude for no narrative reason, but instead primarily to highlight the act of staging the body, thus making
viewers conscious of their own sexual mores.
32. Incidentally, according to an interview with Hopper for the documentary Mysteries
of Love,Lynch had originally intended for Hopper to sniff helium instead of the unknown
gas that he uses in the erotic scenes with Rossellini. The helium, of course, would have
David Lynch and the Sound of the '60s
513
alteredFrank'svoice considerably.BothHopperand Lynchultimatelythought the effect
was too distracting,though one can imagine it working on at least one level as a connection to Lynch'sotheralteredvoices.
33. TimothyCorrigan,A CinemaWithoutWalls:MoviesandCultureAfterVietnam(New
Brunswick,N.J.:RutgersUniversityPress,1991),73.
34. Quoted in Corrigan,CinemaWithoutWalls,72. See also FredericJameson,"Nostalgia for the Present,"in ClassicalHollywoodNarrative:TheParadigmWars,ed. JaneGaines
(Durham,N.C.:Duke UniversityPress,1992),253-73.